


Halfway Through the Wood

by elizajane



Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Cuddling & Snuggling, Established Relationship, First Time, Kissing, M/M, POV Baz, POV Simon, Prompt Fic, Slow Build, Therapy, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-05-17 12:35:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5869798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizajane/pseuds/elizajane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Baz and Simon <strike>almost</strike> have sex on the night of the leavers ball and it doesn't exactly go as desired.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The first work in any fandom is a nerve-wracking exercise in finding your head!canon - thank you to [Crowgirl](http://archiveofourown.org/users/crowgirl) and [knitbelove](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ladymac111/pseuds/knitbelove) for the beta & encouragement. All remaining stumbles are my own.
> 
> Written to fulfill [ January prompt](http://twelve-in-twelve-2016.tumblr.com/post/136348886208/january-prompt) of the #TwelveInTwelve2016 monthly challenge: "Write a first time fic in which the sex fails in some way … and yet does NOT signal the doom of the budding relationship.

**BAZ**

When I return to the leavers ball from the kitchen with a plate of sandwiches from Cook Pritchard, I find Simon standing where I’d left him looking uncomfortable in his borrowed suit. Miss Possibelf has crossed the room to speak with him, and even though I can’t hear what she’s saying her expression is one of restrained sympathy.

I grimace to myself, because if Simon is already feeling pitied by all of us, then the concerned attentions of his former teachers probably aren’t helping. And as willing as I am to kiss it better as much and as often as he needs, I don’t exactly fancy taking such extreme measures directly in front of the dean of students. Even if I’m not one of her charges any longer, and only have one more night under Watford’s roof.

That thought makes me pause, because it reminds me what Simon said about Bunce dropping him at the Watford gates. My tickets for tomorrow’s 10.13 to Oxford are in my overnight bag up in Mummer’s Tower -- my parents have taken everything else in the boot of their car -- and Simon has said he won’t be leaving without me. Which means we’ll be sharing one last night in our old rooms. For the first time since the night Ebb -- and the Mage -- died.

Now isn’t that an unexpected pleasure.

It’s not like we haven’t spent time together since the winter holiday. I’ve been at school and Simon’s been staying with the Bunces, but I spent most of the Easter break at Aunt Fiona’s flat in London and Simon spent most of that time with me. There had been a lot of _Buffy_ and _West Wing_ marathons (Aunt Fiona owns complete sets of both on DVD), and kissing on the couch.

And on the living room floor.

And up against the counter in the kitchen.

And then back on the couch.

I’d drawn the line at the bedroom since even with clean sheets and a fresh duvet cover it was Aunt Fiona’s bed and that was just too weird.

So we spent a lot of nights spooned together on the sagging sofa.

And then, when Simon woke up the next morning, we would kiss even more.

Simon and I haven’t actually … had sex. Yet. Part of it is just that everything has been fucking _intense_ , and not in a good way. What with my father almost starting a war, and the inquiry into the Mage’s death that involved Simon and Penelope giving hours of testimony, multiple times over, followed by closed-door sessions of the Coven to which none of us were invited. And in the midst of it all I was trying to finish my last term at Watford, and missing Simon every time I went back to our rooms.

(I have a new appreciation for what he went through while I was being held by the numpties, even if he did have a daft way of showing it.)

The Easter break is the only time we’ve really had together since January.

When we were together then, I couldn’t keep my hands off of him, or my mouth when no one else was around (and sometimes when they were -- Bunce declared us more than once “ _disgustingly_ cute”). We’d kiss, sometimes for hours, pressed up against each other in the sagging hollows of Aunt Fiona’s sofa, until I thought I might come with my pants and jeans still on, just from the pressure of Simon's thigh pressed between my legs. Until I could feel Simon hard and hot against my thigh, through his jeans, every time I rolled my hips to see if I could make him gasp. Until I could hear the blood singing in his veins -- and that’s the problem, isn’t it?

We would kiss until I could feel the tingling in the roof of my mouth, the pressure of fangs trying to break through.

We would kiss until I made Simon stop because I couldn’t make sense of the want deep in my belly, couldn’t contain it, and had no fucking clue what giving into that want -- that ache so close to hunger -- would do. What I would become.

What sort of danger I might be to Simon.

I mean, it’s not like they included any information on safer sex for vampires in our fifth-year sexual health unit, and neither my parents nor Aunt Fiona offered to supplement the school curriculum. I’m pretty sure my father never wants to think about me having sex with anyone, apart from wishing I would produce an heir, and Daphne has always been cautious about directly contravening my father’s parenting decisions vis-a-vis me, her stepson. Although I always suspect it was Daphne behind the copy of _S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-To-Know Sexuality Guide to Get You Through Your Teens and Twenties_ I found in the drawer of my bedside table when I went home for the summer holiday between fifth and sixth year.

Not that it contained any information on vampires.

But to be honest, the question of how to have safer sex as a vampire was another one of those things I’d convinced myself, until a few months ago, I’d never live long enough to actually need answers to. I expected to die a virgin.

So the whole _being kissed by Simon Snow_ thing caught me off-guard.

I want to do more than kiss him. Desperately. But I don’t know how to keep Simon safe while I’m doing it.

In the final weeks of the term, I’ve lain awake nights talking to Simon on my mobile until he falls asleep. (Headmistress Bunce allows mobiles now, and pretty much every Watford parent has required their kid to have one, after what happened with the Mage.) After Simon drifts off, I listen to him breathing on the other end of the line and pretend it’s like it used to be, all those years when I would drive myself mad listening to his heartbeat in bed, an arm’s length away, and remind myself how much he hated me, how I would never _ever_ get to have him, how the last thing I would be reminded of before I died would be how much Simon Snow wanted me dead -- because he would be the one to kill me (because I would never be able to kill him first).

I’ve lain on my bed staring into the darkness that isn’t much different than daylight to my eyes, tracing the familiar cracks in the plaster on the ceiling of our room, and fancy I can hear Simon’s heartbeat over the mobile connection. I think about how fragile he is, now. With his magic gone.

About how Simon Snow is no longer my failsafe.

You’d think I’d be glad we aren’t trying to kill each other any longer. And Crowley knows I am. Because it means I know things I never expected to know. Like how it feels to have Simon Snow leaning over me with his hands on my wrists, his mouth trailing hot, wet lines across my collarbone while his wings cast burnt umber shadows across a sunlit carpet. I can close my eyes now and remember what it felt like (once, when I stayed over at the Bunces’) to fall asleep with the heavy weight of Simon Snow carelessly snoring against my pillow, to feel his heart beating strong where he was pressed bare-chested hip to shoulder along the length of my torso.

It’s a heady feeling, to know that Simon feels so utterly safe in my arms. But at the same time, I’m also terrified of what I could do to him. He’s so bloody _breakable_.

Since Simon lost his magic, I’ve only ever fallen asleep to the sound of his breathing when he’s at the other end of a mobile, far enough away that I know he’s safe. From me.

And we haven’t had sex. Yet.

Because for all I know it would be the death of Simon. And if I killed Simon, there wouldn’t be anything left I’d care to live for.

It’s getting late; the evening light filtering through the high stained-glass windows of the ballroom is nearly gone. Students -- many of them now _former_ students -- are drifting away from the ball in groups of two or three, some with family members, others hand-in-hand with their plus-ones.

 _Like Simon and me_ , I think, and try not to worry about who saw us dancing, try to remind myself that _everyone already knows_.

The ceilidh band is taking a break in the corner, drinking a round of beers. I brush past the table where the bartender is pouring glasses of cheap wine and pints of beer and **now you see it, now you don’t** a bottle of passable Pinot Grigio from his unopened store. My stepmum would be appalled at the late vintage, but I doubt Simon will even notice.

Simon sees me approaching with the plate of sandwiches and his face lights up with relief. His ridiculous tail, which he’s tucked over his arm like a doffed coat, flicks upward with catlike interest and I wonder if he understands just how endearing I find it. Trust Snow to create an additional appendage that is _even more_ guileless than his utterly transparent facial expressions.

“Basilton,” Miss Possibelf says, turning to follow the line of Simon’s gaze, “congratulations on your speech this afternoon, and on your graduation. Fiona tells me you’re off to London?” Her glance shifts between the two of us.

“She’s off to Prague again next week,” I say smoothly, “doing her bit. I’m crashing at her place until I decide what next.”

“Well, I hope you consider continuing your linguistic studies,” Miss Possibelf says, “You have always been one of Watford’s brightest. With, I must say, the most superb elocution I have seen in my twenty-three years of teaching.”

“Thank you, I will,” I say, inclining my head.

She nods sharply in approval, says, “It was good to see you, Simon,” then takes her leave.

Most of the teachers at Watford have cornered me at one point or another since the Christmas holidays to suggest a course at university following in their footsteps. I can’t exactly explain to them that I’d always assumed I was a dead man walking, that Snow would see to it that I was dead before I actually had to decide how to carry on with existing after Watford, and after I’d grown old enough to tell my father and his friends to fuck off.

After I’d decided there was something -- some _one_ \-- worth existing for.

Most days, I wake up with no bloody clue what I’ll be doing with the rest of my life. Except that I want Simon to be there, to share it with.

Snow’s tail twitches toward the plate of sandwiches, but I pull the plate out of its reach. His control has gotten better since I saw him over the Easter holiday, and I find myself wondering what _else_ he can do --

“Come on, Snow,” I say, jerking my head toward the door, “let’s get out of here before it’s only sixth-years left trying to talk the bartender into something stronger than a pint.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A thank you Crowgirl for the late-evening beta on this so I could post a bit of something for mid-week. <3

**SIMON**

_How do vampires have sex?_

This is actually what I’m thinking, while Miss Possibelf is talking at me in her Voice of Concern, asking me about my plans for university, and about my work with Martin this winter. I make up something about helping Martin with his field studies, although mostly I’ve been making myself useful in the kitchen as no one else in the Bunce household seems very interested in cooking and it seems like something I can do in thanks for them taking me in, and believing me, and everything.

I’ve been watching a lot of _Celebrity Chef_ and _The Great British Bake-Off_.

I’ve even taught myself to bake a pretty decent scone, although they can’t hold a candle to Cook Prichard’s, at least not yet, even if Penny claims to like them better.

But I don’t feel like talking about scones with Miss Possibelf.

I also don’t want to tell her about the panic attacks I started having after I left Watford. About the recurring nightmares, and about how I’d wake up exhausted most mornings because it felt impossible to fall asleep without Baz in the same room. We tried Penny and me sharing her room for a while, which helped some, but not enough. Then Baz got a mobile and started calling me every night to talk until I fell asleep. That was better. He’d tell me about his school projects and ask me about Penny’s research and I’d tell him about the new recipes I was trying and the shows I was watching and sometimes about scarier things. Things like the stuff coming out in the Coven inquiry about the Mage’s activities, and about all of the paperwork they have to talk you through, and all the things you have to sign, when it turns out you’re the closest living relative of a man who died before leaving much of anything in order.

Sometimes, we don’t talk about anything at all because Baz is angry or tired and I’ve used up all my words earlier in the day. On nights like that, I put on a _Good Neighbors_ or old  _Doctor Who_ episode and set the mobile on speakerphone so Baz can hear too. Then we lay in the dark -- Baz in the Mummer’s Tower and me in Premal’s old room at the Bunces -- and let ourselves drift in and out of sleep until it’s late enough that it’s nearly dawn.

It’s a good thing the mobile plan Penny found us has unlimited minutes. Most nights we don’t bother to hang up until Baz’s alarm clock goes off for early morning football practice. Baz swears he can hear my heartbeat all the way from our old rooms at Watford. I’m not sure whether I believe him, or if he’s just being soppy, or trying to get a rise out of me. But imagining him listening to me stay alive through the night helps when I wake up from the dreams where he dies trying to save me. So I keep scoffing when he swears that he can, so he’ll tell me again that it’s true, and whisper the rhythm soft in my ear.

Miss Possibelf is determined to find out what I’ll be doing in the autumn, and as I scan the doorways once again for Baz -- honestly, how long does it take to fetch a plate of sandwiches from the kitchen? -- I wish that Mitali had just announced to the Senior Common Room that I’m taking a gap year. Because this is the fifth time tonight I’ve had to explain to a former teacher that I’m not starting uni in September, and the fifth time I’ve been faced with a Look Of Disappointment. I mumble something to Miss Possibelf about helping Martin with his fieldwork, and about my new job at the Waitrose up the road from the Bunces’. The manager there says that if I work out -- it’s only been a fortnight -- they’ll be willing to consider transferring me to a location closer into the city, so I won’t have to take the Tube for an hour and fifteen every day once Penny and I move into our new flat.

The Tube would be okay if it weren’t for the bloody  **There’s nothing to see here** Penny has to keep casting on my wings and tail so I can pass for Normal. When she casts it strong enough so my clothes fit properly people tend to walk into me or step on my feet or jostle me out of the train whenever the door opens. After the first time or two I went out, I realized I just shouldn’t try to sit down because people only sat on top of me.

So it would be nice to be able to walk to work, if I can get the transfer to one of the city stores.

Talking to the dean is making my chest feel tight, and it’s getting hard to draw a deep breath. To head off the panic attack, I let my mind drift back to slow-dancing with Baz at the end of the last set, just before everyone on the floor had lined up for a frenzied Strip the Willow. About what a relief it had been to rest my forehead on his shoulder and let him worry about keeping my sodding _tail_ out of the way of our feet while we shuffled in a little circle, Baz worrying about what everyone else in the room was thinking while I closed my eyes and worried (a little) about what _Baz_ was thinking.

_How do humans have sex with vampires?_

The answer seems to be, as far as I can tell, that no one knows who isn’t a vampire. Because no one who isn’t a vampire has bothered to learn much about vampires -- how they work, what they want, what they need. Penny says it’s appallingly racist. That the more she’s read in the Bunces’ library the clearer it is to her that vampires have been the scapegoats of the magickal community for centuries at least.

“It’s just _disgusting_ , Simon,” she told me the other day, in the Bunces’ kitchen, while I was making dinner. She likes to study at the counter while I test recipes on her. That day, I was trying to figure out whether the chicken breasts in the oven were cooked through and she’d perched at the island in the kitchen with a mug of tea and a giant vellum-bound book open in front of her.

“I’ve had to go back to seventeenth-century sources for anything approaching a first-person perspective,” she’d continued, “And even then all I’ve been able to find is this travelogue by Lady Maria Uglow Tarlington” -- she’d waved the mug at the book, sloshing a bit of tea dangerously close to the rich, cream-paper pages -- “who lived for two decades in Turkey with -- and I’m totally reading between the lines here, but it seems pretty clear -- her _vampire lover_. Except, get this: the most important bits excised by the publisher due to concerns about obscenity charges!”

At least now that the Bunces know Baz is a vampire, and Penny’s mum is running Watford, Baz has been able to stop hunting rats in the catacombs every other night and just has a mini fridge in his room -- what used to be our room -- where he keeps a week’s supply of blood. The day she took over the school, Mitali had made arrangements with Cook Pritchard to have it delivered from the local butcher each Tuesday.

Mitali hadn’t said a word against Mr. Grimm in Baz’s hearing but I had seen the way her lips thinned when Penny told her about Baz foraging for his own blood supply since he was just a kid -- and Penny had told me afterwards how she’d overheard her mum ranting to her dad in the upstairs office about shirking of _parental responsibilities_ , _conditional fucking love_ , and _sanguivoriphobia_.

“Sanguivoriphobia?” I’d asked Penny.

“Like homophobia, but for vampires,” she’d sniffed. “I mean, Mr. Grimm hates that his son is queer, too, so. It’s not like any of us are _surprised_ he’s been an asshole about this.”

“Until recently, we were assholes about this too,” I’d reminded her, feeling the usual flare of shame in my chest for having spent so long convinced Baz was trying to kill me when -- well, maybe he was trying to kill me, but it turns out he was also interested in kissing me. And I kind of regret, now, that I spent all of that time dating Agatha when it turns out Baz and I could have been snogging for the past three years as well as being mortal enemies.

I mean, I did really like Agatha. I think we’re still friends. Maybe? Whenever she talks to Penny over Skype she waves “hi” to me if I happen to walk through the background. I think Penny’s told her about Baz and me. If she hadn’t already guessed. But I don’t _miss_ Agatha. Not the way I expect you’re supposed to miss someone when you stop being their boyfriend.

Not the way I would miss Baz.

Not the way I missed Baz when he was taken by the numpties -- like I couldn’t draw a proper breath without knowing where he was. And not the way I’ve missed him during the past few months, when he’s mostly been at Watford, when I lay in bed at night listening to his voice on my mobile and trying not to think about how empty the bedroom feels without him in it.


	3. Chapter 3

**SIMON**

It’s just. The last time Baz and I did more than kiss it - it didn’t exactly end well.

It was our second-to-last night in Fiona’s flat. She was due back from her super-secret spy assignment somewhere in Estonia (we weren’t supposed to know where) at the end of the week and Baz had to drive back to his parents’ that Friday, so they could drive him back to Watford on Saturday.

That whole week had been pretty great. I’d crashed with Baz at Fiona’s and Penny came by most days to hang out with us -- mostly so she could remind Baz that he was only coming in head of the class because she’d decided not to return. They spent a lot of time batting obscure magickal references back and forth over coffee or while we were riding the Tube or wandering around the shops on Oxford Street or through the galleries at the British Museum. I liked listening to them being friends; their words never seem to dry up, voices tumbling over each other like a good-natured rugby scrum.

While they talked, I got to pay attention to the way Baz’s fingers felt laced with my own (and how he stopped pulling away when I grabbed at his hand in public midway through our first day in London). And think about how nice it felt when he pressed himself up behind me on the escalator at Primark (and how he _hmmmed_ under his breath against my shoulder when I pressed back). And watch the way his eyes changed color when I slid a hand up his thigh under the table of the Costa Coffee (and how he’d adjust his seat so his legs fell open just a bit wider).

“This is one of those times where I think you should try paying attention to what _you_ want, Simon,” Rayshauna had told me over the Skype connection during our appointment the week before Baz was due to come down from Watford.

I’d told her, in one of our early sessions, about the lists of things I haven’t let myself think about, about how thinking about them hurts too much. So she’s been trying to help me not stop myself from wanting something just because I’m worried I won’t be able to have it.

“It’s important for you to be able to say what you want and don’t want, Simon,” she reminds me. She says the Mage manipulated me into depending on him, that he granted me access to the things I wanted and needed -- the food at Watford, the room I shared with Baz, my friends, his attention -- on the condition that I let him control my future.

It’s been hard to think about the Mage like that. So mostly, I try not to think about the Mage.

Instead, I focus on the breathing exercises that Rayshauna has been teaching me, and practice making decisions for myself that aren’t based on what I think Dr. Wellbelove, or Martin and Mitali, or Rayshauna, or even Baz, or Penny want me to do.

That’s why I said no to university (because I didn’t want to go).

And why I said yes to living with Penny (because I like how we get on. I like having her around).

And why I’m saying yes, yes, _yes_ to Baz (because I want to, want _him_ ).

The problem with the second-to-last night of our holiday in London wasn’t that I didn’t know what I wanted (Baz), and it also wasn’t that I didn’t say what I wanted (I did). And it was pretty bloody obvious that Baz wanted me back (he was sitting across my lap letting me suck hickeys across the pale skin of his collarbones). We’d stripped to the waist and I’d let Baz unspell my wings -- something we’d discovered on the second night he _really_ enjoyed -- and he was running his palms over the bony, furred humerus to the joint and back.

It wasn’t the first time Baz’s fangs had popped when we’re snogging. The previous afternoon, when we’d been making out in the kitchen while the lasagna was in the oven, his game face had made an appearance and Baz had just panted _Stop_ against my mouth, his hand against my chest. I’d stopped. And stayed still, very still, while he disentangled himself from me, where I was backed up against the counter, and carefully, deliberately walked to the fridge and knocked back a pint of blood without even bothering to heat it up first.

At the time, Baz thought -- and Penny had concurred -- that his problem was he hadn’t had blood since the night before, and we had supper in the oven, and he was just hungry, and one thing had led to another and --

But this time, Baz had been extra careful to feed well during dinner. And he’d even nursed another pint of blood while we watched “Once More With Feeling,” Baz’s legs across my lap and my tail curled around his waist.

Then Penny had left to catch the Tube home and he’d asked, “Can I unspell your wings?”

That night  _was_  the first time Baz actually draw blood before either of us realized what was happening.

He only nicked me. I think. I mean, there was only a scratch on my neck. When I had the chance, later, to look in the mirror while I was brushing my teeth. A thin, shallow scratch slightly deeper at one end where he’d started to press his fangs into the artery before pulling back.

Before yanking himself away from me.

Before walking without a word into the hall, where I heard him pull his jacket roughly from the hook and his keys off the hall stand, before slamming out the door and into the night.

He hadn’t even put on his shoes.

Fiona’s flat felt unbearably empty after he’d gone.

For the first minute or two after he left, I sat really still and counted my breaths -- _in… and out. in...and out._ \-- and listened to my pulse slowing down. I could still feel Baz’s hands on my wings and his lips on my neck. My dick felt cold, suddenly, even though I was still wearing my pants and jeans, and my skin felt tight all over.

The place where Baz had started to bite me was starting to sting like a bad sunburn, and I could feel heat spreading outward from where his left fang had punctured my skin. I considered, briefly, calling 999 in case I’d been poisoned. Baz would probably break up with me if I let myself die or be turned by vampire saliva.

But what would I tell the EMTs -- “So what did you say you’ve been bitten by?”

“Um, my boyfriend? the vampire?”

“Uh-huh. So … what have you taken exactly? Can you estimate how long the drugs have been in your system?”

So I didn’t call 999. And the sunburn didn’t get worse. And the warmth actually spread like really expensive whiskey -- the kind the Wellbeloves serve on Burn’s Night -- down through my belly all the way to my toes.

And Baz did come back. After a bit.

After I’d brushed my teeth and put a plaster on my neck and pulled my pajamas on.

He wouldn’t talk about where he’d gone or what he’d done while he was out. And he wouldn’t look at the plaster on my neck when he thought I was watching (and couldn’t stop looking at it when he thought I wouldn’t see).

I’d worried that maybe he'd refuse to sleep with me. But I tried saying what I wanted -- “Baz, I want you here on the couch with me.” -- and it worked because he came over to the couch where I was wrapped in one of Fiona’s tatty crocheted blankets and let me hold him against my chest while I fell asleep with my cheek pressed up against his shoulder blade.

When I woke up the next morning he was already in the kitchen making a pot of coffee and by the giant circles under his eyes I didn’t think he’d slept at all.

Since that night, I’ve spent a lot of time wanting to punch something.

Sometimes Baz.

I think he’s worrying too much.

He thinks I’m not worrying enough.

In three sodding libraries’ worth of magickal texts -- Watford, the Grimm-Pitches, the Bunces -- not to mention the whole of the magickal Internet we haven’t been able to find any trustworthy information about which of the two of us is right.

It’s all been theoretical since April anyway, since Baz went back for the last six weeks of term and the two of us were back to nightly telephone calls where I listened to the sound of his voice and imagined him holding me safe beneath the duvet as I drifted off to sleep.

Until I’d got the idea to come up to Watford for the leavers ball.

And then I’d remembered the Roommate’s Anathema, and realized that maybe there was a way after all. A way we could try … try something more than kissing where Baz knew he _couldn’t_ hurt me.

Which is why I’m standing here in Watford’s drafty ballroom in a borrowed suit thinking about how vampires have sex in front of the dean of students.

 _Finally_ \-- just as Miss Possibelf’s reserve of former student stories is running dry -- I catch sight of Baz, sandwich plate in hand, hovering by the drinks table like he’s trying to decide if I need rescuing from the dean. _Crowley, please._ I feel my tail twitch with pleasure as he approaches, my shoulders relaxing from the defensive hunch they’ve fallen into in Baz’s absence. I’m glad I came tonight, for Baz, but Watford doesn’t feel like home anymore and I’m still working out how I feel about that. Without Baz to focus on, I’ve started to feel like everyone was staring at me, probably blaming me for the Mage’s death (I blame myself for the Mage’s death, even if I didn’t mean to do it, even if I’m glad he’s dead), probably blaming me for all the dead spots I didn’t even know I was creating. There are too many shadows in this ballroom, and too many complicated memories.

“Basilton,” Miss Possibelf is saying, and then Baz is there with the right social niceties and before I can steal my favorite sandwich from the plate Baz is pulling me away from what’s left of the ball and out into the twilight of the courtyard.

It’s a warm night, and clear, with a waxing moon already high in the sky. I run awkwardly into Baz when he pauses to take a deep breath and look up at the stars emerging in the gathering darkness. I feel the lump of something tucked under Baz’ arm that he’s magicked out of sight -- and then see, once I’m looking for it, the cobalt blue of a wine bottle, one I recognize from the open bar inside.

“Sneak,” I say, poking his arm, “You stole a bottle of wine!”

Baz snorts. “Hardly stealing, given what my parents paid for me to attend here.”

“Which is why you’re hiding it.”

I haven’t been up to our rooms -- our _former_ rooms -- since the night I killed the Mage, and it feels a bit funny to be climbing the Tower stairs for the first time since I left Watford. I hadn’t really let myself think about what it would be like because I was afraid if I did I wouldn’t be able to walk through the front gate, like Penny who’d gotten queasy just opening the gates for me this afternoon.

Some nights, I wake up from nightmares in which Penny isn’t there to _make_ the Mage listen and Baz kills him instead, or the Mage kills Baz, and always, always I can’t get anyone to listen to me, listen when I tell them it wasn’t Baz’s fault.

Rayshauna tells me it’s normal not to know how I feel about what happened, and normal for what I feel to change over time. We’ve talked a little about the Mage being my father, but -- I can’t even begin to piece together what that means to me right now.

Since Easter we’ve talked a lot more about Baz being my boyfriend and a vampire, and Rayshauna has promised to see what she can to help us. Baz has a standing offer of weekly confidential Skype sessions when he wants them -- I know his family can afford to pay, and if his father refuses I think Daphne might actually overrule him this time and make sure they’re covered. If not, I’ve told Baz I would pay for them myself.

Baz says he won’t let me but -- I have some money, now, from the Mage, and it seems like the Mage should pay to help Baz get better, since it was the Mage who killed Baz’s mum and made Baz a vampire.

We get to the top of the stairs and Baz’s hands are full so I say, “Here,” and reach to steal his tiepin before he can protest. With the Watford seal and our class year on it, the pin is more flash than the one he usually wears; the Coven sent it to him for being top of the class. Before I can think about it too much, I stab the point of the pin into my thumb just deep enough to draw blood so I can press my hand to the doorjamb and remind the room who I am.

I don’t actually know if it will work; the Watford gates didn’t recognize me at all this afternoon and Penny had to get out of the car and make sure I was through the gates before she left. But whatever giving up my stolen powers did, it doesn’t seem to have made my blood so different that the room can’t recognize me: the door clicks open and swings silently inward on its well-oiled hinges. Maybe the front gates don’t know I belong, but the Tower still thinks that I’m one of its own.

Which means that the Roommate’s Anathema should still be in binding effect. I feel the palms of my hands break out in sweaty relief.

Baz’s nostrils flare at the scent of blood and he raises an eyebrow as he steps past me into the room.

I grin and hold my thumb up -- “Taste?” I ask, because I’m feeling slightly reckless from the glass of champagne I drank earlier, and from the blood actually working.

Baz rolls his eyes at me. “Clean up after yourself, Snow, if you must do things the inelegant way.”

But I can tell that I’ve distracted him by the way he doesn’t actually make eye contact while I put my thumb in my mouth and suck it clean.

Then I stand in the doorway, hesitating. It’s disorienting to see the room almost bare, what used to be my bed neatly made up with Watford bed linens, Baz’s overnight bag sitting on it, along with a few items he’d obviously pulled out to get ready for the ball scattered around. All my posters and school supplies are gone (what I didn’t take with me when I moved to the Bunces, Baz has packed and sent home with his parents); the doors of Baz’s wardrobe are open showing empty shelves and hangers.

I expect if I went into the toilet his usual toiletries would be pared down to a minimum -- although judging from the way he smelled on the dance floor tonight, he made sure not to pack my favorite shaving lotion, the one from Lush, that makes him smell like honey and chamomile tea.

“Well?” he says, arching an eyebrow at my hesitation, “I went to all this trouble to procure your favorite sandwiches and abscond with alcohol -- yet you’re going to to waste the evening standing indecisively in the doorway?”

He sets the plate and bottle down on his now-empty desk, pausing to untie and pull off his shoes, then pads over to the mini fridge for a jam jar of blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [This is the shaving lotion Baz buys from Lush](https://uk.lush.com/products/shaving/ambrosia).
> 
> And I just want to acknowledge, because it came up in discussion with my darling betas, that this fic is developing minor canon-divergent tendencies. Contrary to what is indicated at the end of _Carry On_ , in this 'verse Simon isn't going directly to university. And it's unclear at the end of the novel, but I've decided that it comes out during the Coven inquiry that Simon's birth parents are Davy and Lucy. I haven't decided what this means in terms of extended family yet.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy [International Fanworks Day 2016](http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/4770)!

**BAZ**

I don’t actually _need_ to drink any more blood today, not the way I needed it for all those years when I was making do with what I could scrounge in the catacombs. I’m still getting used to having a regular _supply_ in my room like Niall has the mini-fridge of insulin to manage his diabetes.

When Headmistress Bunce first arranged for the weekly deliveries with Cook Pritchard it was hard to just drink my way through them -- I’d leave the jars lined up on the refrigerator shelves as an emergency supply and make do with rats until the next week’s supply came and I had to drink my way through the entire store to make room for the fresh stuff.

A couple of times, I binged so badly I ended up puking blood in the toilet like some sort of consumptive heroine from a nineteenth-century novel.

The third time that happened I told myself I was being ridiculous. So I started forcing myself to drink from the fridge every day. It’s actually … better. When I drink blood in the morning before I go down to breakfast, I can actually drink coffee and eat a croissant without my fangs popping out. Since early March I’ve been doing the same before lunch and dinner; it actually means I can eat food around other people, sometimes. People who aren’t Simon (and maybe now Penny).  

I had a pint glass jar of blood earlier, after changing for the ball, and it was my third for the day. But I hadn’t expected Simon to turn up for the ball. It’s making me jumpy. It feels … _intimate_ , suddenly, to have Simon here in our room again.

The only night we’ve spent together, here, since we started snogging -- well. Not only were we too exhausted and disoriented to do much of anything, but Penny was asleep in Simon’s bed and Premal Bunce had been told off by his mother to keep watch just outside the door. So we slept. And I don’t remember even that very well.

Tonight, though, it’s just us. Like it used to be … and not at all like it used to be.

I can see him out of the corner of my eye, sucking the smear of blood off the pad of his thumb and I can’t decide whether I hate him for so carelessly bleeding in my face or I love him a little bit more every time he trusts me not to -- not to --

My stomach clenches at the memory.

Simon finally makes whatever decision had him hesitating on the threshold and moves into the room, shrugging out of Dr. Wellbelove’s suit coat as he moves and draping it gingerly over the back of his desk chair before perching awkwardly on the bed that used to be his, the one I’ve been trying to ignore for the past three months. During the past week, it’s mostly been covered with the stuff I had left to pack, but father and Daphne took all of that away this afternoon and only my travel kit is left.

Simon rests his elbows on his knees and leans forward, scrubbing his hands across his face in a gesture I recognize -- an effort to wipe some tangle of confusing thoughts or feelings from the inside of his head. Then he looks up at me.

I’m leaning against the desk, unscrewing the jar and considering my options for warming its contents to a palatable temperature. I can drink it cold, but it’s unpleasant going down and leaves a metallic after-taste that warm blood doesn’t. The problem is that neither Cook Pritchard nor I have been able to come up with just the right spell to get the job done. Last week, when we were talking over the phone, Simon suggested getting some sort of fancy cooking pot and an instant-read kitchen thermometer, like chefs use, so that I could heat it on the hob without over-warming it to the point of clotting.

But of course, we don’t have a hob or even a hotplate here in the Tower -- so it’s unreliable spellwork or nothing.

_Sod it,_ I think, and swallow it down with a grimace.  _I’ll wash it down with the wine._

Which makes me remember I packed the corkscrew I kept in my desk for emergency situations last week, and it’s currently either in the boot of my parents’ car or sitting in a box in my bedroom at home.

“Hand me a sandwich?” Simon asks, as I set down the jar to reach for the bottle. Ah, lucky for us, whomever was put in charge of selecting the wine for the ball has taste in their feet or a tight budget because it’s a screw top. Chav -- but usefully so.

I drop to the floor cross-legged next to Simon and pull the plate of sandwiches off the desk so we can have them on the between us. Simon slides without his usual lack of grace off the bed to join me on the floor, drawing up his knees and leaning against the frame. He snakes his tail out from behind his back and twines it loosely around my wrist while reaching for a sandwich from the generous pile Cook Pritchard sent up.

His control _has_ been getting better. I wish I’d thought to unbutton my shirtsleeves before picking up the bottle so I could feel the velvet slide of his tail on my skin.

I get the bottle of Pinot open and take an inelegant swig, then pass it across to Simon before reaching back with my free hand for the blood I left up on the desk.

I swallow down another third of a pint, feeling the scratchy tingle in the roof of my mouth from my fangs responding to the taste of blood already on my tongue. The itchy, gnawing hunger in the pit of my stomach that lets me know the _need_ to feed is well and truly asleep right now, thank fuck, but I want it as far away as possible if I’m going to spend the night with a slightly tipsy Simon, who’s currently winding his clingy tail tighter against my forearm.

Who’s watching me drink blood over his own mouthful of sandwich with an all-too-familiar expression on his face.

“No kissing when the fangs are out,” I remind him, putting a hand against his chest as he starts to lean forward.

Because of course reckless, heedless Simon is fascinated by what he’s taken to calling my “game face.” (I never should have agreed to re-watching _Buffy_.)

Because of course every serious argument we’ve had since that night on the road out of London has been about his unwillingness to understand how dangerous my vampirism is _to him_.

My heart is beating faster now, I can feel it hard and fast in my own throat, and I wonder if Simon is also aware of its increasingly staccato rhythm against the twine of his tail as it passes across the underside of my wrist. Whether he can hear how his own blood is quickening in unconscious response.

I lick my lips and swallow, trying to remind myself how very, very badly this went the last time we tried to --

The last time we --

I have dreams, sometimes, where Simon has his wild, impossible magic back and I don’t have to worry about breaking him, or draining him dry, and I don’t have to make him stop. Where he undresses me, and I undress him, and he lays me out on my bed -- this bed in front of us -- only it’s a vast, endless space, and time stretches out around us, with Simon’s wings beating a soft rhythm like a heartbeat above our heads, and I can let go because I know Simon will catch me.

“Baz --” Simon sighs, reaching up to brush my hair back from my forehead. His palm cups my cheek, thumb brushing the stretch of my upper lip over the sensitive place where my fangs are trying to push out in response to the tang of blood on my tongue.

I close my eyes and let him.

I have dreams, sometimes -- but dreams aren’t the same as reality. And in reality Simon no longer has his magic (the magic he argues was never his to have). And in reality, the last time I forgot that Simon couldn’t catch me -- couldn’t _stop_ me -- I ended up with the taste of his blood on my tongue.

I’ve spent the last six weeks of term thinking about how much I want to taste him again.

The night when I bit him, I had been so sure that I’d figured out how to keep myself under control. That I could chase the taste of him in ways that didn’t lead to blood. That night, after Penny had left for the Tube and we were alone again, I think we could both feel the end of our London holiday closing in on us, the weeks of separation ahead before graduation. And Simon still isn’t very good at saying what he wants, but he’s better than he thinks he is at showing me.

When your boyfriend does things like pull you into his lap where you can feel his erection pressed deliciously against your own through layers of denim and cotton; when your boyfriend slides his hands up under your jumper and fucking _hums_ at the sounds you make when he trails blunt nails down the arch of your back; when your boyfriend pushes your jumper and shirt off entirely so he can lick kisses against nipples you’ve never spent much time thinking about except now -- Goddess, _fuck_ \-- you fucking _whine_ when he leans back to say, breathlessly, “Baz, please, can we -- ?”

I’d looked down at him, feeling dazed, and shivering not because I was cold but because of the _want_ crawling all over my skin like the burn of Simon’s magic only better, so much better, because this didn’t hurt

I thought, in that moment, of all the times I’d imagined kissing Simon. Touching Simon. Of being kissed, and touched, by Simon in return. And I’d thought how distant those fantasies now seemed in comparison to the _OhMyFuckingGodsAndGoddesses_ immediacy of my boyfriend’s hips trapped between my knees, the way I could feel his pulse high up the inside of my thigh, where the _ThudThudThud_ of the blood pumping through his veins played echo with my own.

I flexed my thighs and resettled myself on Simon’s lap, a hairsbreadth closer, listening to the way his breathing hitched as my weight lifted and returned.

I closed my eyes and did it again. I could hear his heart singing soft and urgent in his ribcage, nestled against his lungs. Again. His hands where they’d settled on my hips urged me closer.

“Can I unspell your wings?” I’d asked, sounding slightly breathless even to myself.

And he’d nodded, whispered, “Yeah,” as he pushed his hips up into the backs of my thighs.

It felt so good. Better than good. I was never that patient on my own, could never make it last the way Simon and I seemed to, chasing each other toward -- well, neither of us have actually come, yet, when we’re together.

I’d thought, at the time, that maybe we’d finally reached the point where it was going to happen. That one, or both, of us was going to come right there on Aunt Fiona’s lumpy Oxfam couch, painfully hard in our jeans, rocking with each other in an insistent rhythm that felt like it couldn’t possibly last much longer while simultaneously going on and on and --

When I took a deep breath I could taste his arousal against the back of my throat, thick and rich, almost too rich. And that’s when things started to get confused, in my head, under my skin, deep in my belly where multiple _wants_ coiled dangerously together.

I’d thought, that night, that I’d had had enough blood to ignore the sweet, sharp tang of sea salt and sweet rose that was the taste of Simon against my lips; I’d thought -- I’d thought -- until I didn’t want to think anymore.

Six weeks later, I’m still not sure if I’m more disgusted by how much I want to drink Simon’s blood, or by how close I’ve come to seriously considering how to do it without killing him.

“Simon --” I start, setting down my glass and reaching up to slide my own hand down the line of his cheek, feeling the place where he must have nicked himself shaving slide under the tips of my fingers.

I press my forehead against his and breathe, letting his scent slide over me and trying to gauge how dangerous this _want_ inside me is. Breathing him in, having him touch me like this, hasn’t brought my fangs any closer to the surface tonight. Maybe -- maybe --

“Simon --” I start, again, but he interrupts me before I can decide what it is I’m going to say.

“No, listen to me,” he says, doggedly, earnestly, “Tonight is -- this is perfect! I’ve been thinking. You _can’t_ hurt me here -- you _know_ you can’t.”

I pull back to peer at him, pretty sure he’s gone mental. “Simon, I don’t --”

I must look like someone pranked me with a **D’oh!** because he grins at me and gestures toward the room around us. “Because of the Roommate’s Anathema, Baz! What’s the worst that could happen? If, like, you vamp out and go for my throat again --” he swallows, an expression passing across his face that makes my skin burn, suddenly, with the question I haven’t let myself ask: _How did it feel when I --_

He hadn’t said. That night. Or the following morning. Or any time since.

“ --Watford will just eject you! You _can’t_ hurt me here,” he finishes, with that trusting certainty he has in me that makes me want to shake him.  

He spent seven years paranoid that I was plotting to kill him, and then I go and get kidnapped by fucking numpties. The next time he sees me it’s like instead of seven years of fighting it’s been seven years of flirting. I’ve had months to get used to -- and know I never want to give up -- this Simon ... but sometimes it makes me angry how willing he is to put himself in my hands and trust that I won’t break him.

I realize he’s waiting hopefully for some sort response. “ _Crowley_ , Simon,” I mumble, hearing the frustration in my own voice. “We can’t just --”

“ _You_ _can’t hurt me_ ,” he repeats, like if he just says it enough times he can make me believe it.

I stare at him, not sure whether he’s just had a moment of brilliance or if this is just another one of his profoundly stupid ideas. “But --” I try again, swallowing against the sudden constriction in my throat, “ --but if --”

He grins at me, and pushes forward against the hand I have on his chest, leaning in to steal a kiss. I duck away from his mouth, turning my head, even as my fingers curl into the warm cloth of his shirt, even  as I think about undoing the buttons and pushing my hands up underneath his vest --

Of the two of us, I clearly have to be the voice of reason here. Again.

“We don’t know that, Simon, it might not even work, now that you’re not a Watford student anymore. _I’m_ not even technically a Watford student anymore. Maybe the Anathema only works as long as you’re students and roommates. Right now, we’re not either of those things. And I’m not taking that chance with --”

Simon grins at me, again, and holds up his thumb, so I can see the angry red dot where he’d jabbed himself earlier. I catch a whiff of that particular scent of blood that’s all Simon. I swear he has a flavor all his own, turkish delight and the ocean wind after a storm; that’s part of what’s been driving me mental --

“The _room_ still knows I belong here,” he says, satisfied, “The _room_ still let me open the door with my blood. That means we’re still roommates, and the Anathema still applies.” He pushes himself to his feet and reaches a hand down to me.

I take his hand automatically and let Simon pull me to my feet while I scramble to recall what I know of the Anathema, how lasting its effects are, whether there’s any precedent for -- “This is a bad idea,” I tell him as his tail snakes around the small of my back to pull me closer.

“Kissing you has never been a bad idea,” he counters, starting to unbutton my waistcoat so he can get at my dress shirt.

“Simon --” I try again, more question than protest. I reach out and slide my palm against his neck, where I bit him, feeling the steady beat of blood in the artery beneath his skin. He gets my waistcoat open and then my shirt, sliding warm, steady hands up under my vest. We’ve done this before, he’s not touching anywhere he hasn’t already, but this time -- _the Anathema_ whispers a treacherous voice in the back of my mind.

_The Anathema will keep him safe_ .

“Unspell my wings, Baz,” he says, “Unspell my wings and take me to bed.”

_The Anathema should keep him safe._

“Yeah,” I say, trying to ignore the fear in my stomach. _Kissing you has never been a bad idea_. “Yeah, let’s -- let’s try,” and tug him gently forward until his lips brush mine, already open, his tongue darting out to taste what must be a bizarre mix of blood and wine on my breath.

“Yeah?” he asks, like he can’t quite believe what I’ve said, but his lips against mine are already turning up in a smile and I can feel the flat end of his tail pressed distractingly low against my belly where I think he’s trying to work it under the waistband of my trousers.

I taste his tongue on my lips and try my best to smile back, sliding my free hand across his chest between hand down to the first button of his shirt, then the next, working them loose until I have enough fabric to twist into a fist and pull him with me as I walk the two steps back to the bed and let our momentum carry me back onto the mattress, our legs tangled together.

Tonight suddenly seems full of possibilities I’ve been trying not to imagine.

Simon crawls after me onto the narrow bed and kneels above me, straddling my hips, a little awkward and slightly off-balance from the draft of his wings. They still throw him off, sometimes, especially when he’s tired or not entirely sober. Even when we’ve spelled them invisible he says he can still feel the weight of them folded against his back.

I reach out to steady him with my hands on the tops of his thighs, so he doesn’t overbalance, and feel the shift of his muscles as he pushes forward, leaning into and over me like some sort of avenging angel, the shadows of his wings plucking at the corner of my eyes.

“Tell me again,” he says, and I see the fierce question in the back of his eyes.

“I choose _you_ ,” I whisper up into the air between us.

As I slide my hands up the curve of his back **there’s nothing to see here** tingles against my palms, letting off the scent of sizzled sage as my magic comes in contact with the residue of Penny’s spellwork.

“Do you want me to --” I ask against Simon’s warm lips as he braces himself with his hands on the mattress either side of my head and returns to his leisurely, wine-sodden exploration of my mouth.

“ _Mmm_ ,” he hums agreeably, arching his back against my palms.

I urge him upright with my hands and push off his shirt, help him off with his vest, so his torso is bare. I don’t let myself think, yet, about what’s beneath his trousers and pants, even if I can feel him a familiar weight when he rocks forward in my lap, and my nose is filled with his wanting.

I slide my hands back up over his shoulder blades where the tingle is strongest, pulling him back in against my chest so I can lay my cheek against his and whisper an **I can see clearly now** soft and against his ear. I feel the tight flare of flame between my palms and his skin, too brief to do either of us any damage, and the scent of burnt sage rises off his skin as Simon’s wings unfurl into the room. I let my hands drop to the small of his back, fingers curled loosely into the groove of his spine, as I drop my head back and _look_.

Simon’s wings are beautiful. He gets ridiculously shy -- even more inarticulate than his usual inarticulate self -- when I say things about them. So obviously, I tease him about them whenever he gives me the opening. But they really are beautiful. A good twelve feet from tip to tip when fully extended, they fold up impossibly small against his back most of the time.

Simon says they’re leathery, but in that case they’re like the softest leather gloves I’ve ever worn, covered in fine hair the like the ears of my sister Mordelia’s pet rats, Harry and Ron. I love pulling them open when he lets me touch them (he almost always lets me touch them) and watching the light filter through the membrane, feeling the controlled strength of the muscles and tendons that wrap around the humerus and radius of the wingspan.

Like his tail, Simon’s wings are deep burnt umber, except out along the metacarpals, toward the edges of the membrane, where the color fades to ochre like that fire hair look half the seventh-year girls at Watford have been trying to mimic this spring. At the wrists and elbows of each wing are wicked looking talons or claws. Simon calls them his “spikes”; Dr. Wellbelove says they’re bone and keratin like horns or tusks.

Simon sighs into the hollow of my neck, as he extends the wings above us before letting them fall back, and I hear the joints pop as he relaxes against me. “Crowley,” he says, “that feels good. Even spelled they felt a bit stuffed into that suit.”

I laugh and I close my eyes,  feeling the tickle of his hair against my cheek, turning my head so I can breathe him in, pressed so close in my arms. Wild roses after a storm.

I’m so fucking tired of being the one who has to keep saying _no_.

Tonight, I decide, I’ll try saying _yes_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should probably also remind readers at this point that the fic is written for a prompt about sexual intimacy going wrong. There's no non-con, dub-con, or coercion but this isn't going to be as easy as Simon (or Baz) is hoping it will be. There's going to be kisses and cuddles at the end of it, but actual sexual pleasure-to-the-point-of-orgasm-for-all-parties-involved is not where this fic is going. 
> 
> I'mSoSorryPleaseForgiveMeForThePromptAndTheAngst. 
> 
> IPromiseThereWillBeAPartTwoWithPleasurableSexytimesForAllEventually.


	5. Chapter 5

**SIMON**

  _How do I want to have sex with Baz?_

  _How does Baz want to have sex with me?_

At some point since Easter, the most important questions stopped being about humans and vampires. The most important questions are about _us_.

I press my face against the curve of Baz’s chin, nosing the warm, soft spot behind his ear. I breathe him in, letting myself enjoy the musk of his sweat mixed with the lingering honey, chamomile, and chocolate notes of his lotion. I can taste the faint tang of the blood he was drinking, too, from when we were kissing as he unspelled my wings.

I extend my wings again, to work out the cramps in my shoulder muscles and also because I know Baz loves them. He especially likes it when I open them like this, leaning over him, turning the light around us muted and gold. The effect is stronger in daylight, but the harsh fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling still filter through in warm, shivering shadows, and the movement of my wings makes the stuffy air in the tower eddy around us.

Baz shudders beneath me, one of his full-body sighs, and I feel the moment when he decides to let me have this, have _him_ , the last breath of distance between us dissolving as he he plays his fingers over the angles and planes of my shoulders, the furred joints, the translucent slightly ticklish webbing. He skims his fingers down over my shoulders and the front of my chest, as I lift myself up to resume kissing him mouth to mouth, one of my favorite places to kiss him. Maybe because his mouth is one of his vulnerable places, a part of himself he doesn’t like most people to pay attention to, a mouth that holds secrets only I have really been allowed to see and touch, and be touched by, and a mouth that’s kept me safe from the other end of a mobile connection through nights of endless, terrifying dreams.

I press a kiss against the corner of his mouth as he scrapes his nails down through the fine hair on my chest, use my tongue to tease open his mouth as he fumbles with my belt, suck on his lower lip as he mumbles something indistinct against the smile I’m not even trying to suppress.

I pull back so I can see his face: “Yeah?” It comes out a bit more breathless than I expected.

“Is this --” he licks his own lips, where I know he can taste me, and I see his pupils expand. The flecks of obsidian light that appear when he vamps out surface, momentarily, before sinking again. Something about my expression makes him falter, glance away, and then back like he has to remind himself it’s okay that I can see him gazing up at me.

I wonder, not for the first time, if he understands how beautifully _fierce_ he looks when his vampire side emerges.

I used to think Baz spent an appreciable amount of time admiring himself in the mirror. Over the past few months I’ve started to wonder if his lengthy morning bathroom routines have been less about self-admiration than they have been about finding elaborate ways to hide. I mean, it’s worked, hasn’t it? The entire school, including me, spent years assaulted by Baz’s arrogant swagger and taste for the dramatic -- suave colors, top marks, perfect vowels, flawless spells, his better-than-everyone attitude -- and we missed how it kept everyone looking away from how solitary and scared he stood at the center of all that flash.

He’s looking a bit scared now. “Is this okay?” he asks, hands still at my waist, fingers fiddling with my belt buckle, slipping down below the waistband of my dress trousers like he can’t stop himself from trying to get closer, and, _Crowley,_ do I want him closer.

“Baz,” I say. “What about this situation do you think could possibly _not_ be okay with me?” Him. Getting me naked. Me. Getting him naked. The two of us finally, _finally_ getting to just -- _be_ together. Without anymore hiding.

“I would have done this with you in April if you’d --” I almost say _If you had let me_ but that sounds mean so I stutter and change it to “--if you’d been ready.”

“I know,” he says, quiet. “I’m sorry, I --”

“Hey,” I say. “I want you.” I settle my weight back into my hips, folding my wings against my back in order to balance, dragging my tail up the inside of Baz’s still-trousered thigh. “Why do you think I’m here tonight?”

That finally wins me a smile and the familiar Basilton arch of an eyebrow. “Are you sure it wasn’t just Cook Pritchard’s sandwiches?”

I pretend to consider as I slide my hands down his chest, in a gesture that mirrors the path he just took down my own.

“Mmm,” I say, “Yeah, you’re right. On second thought maybe I won’t get naked with my dead-sexy boyfriend. I’ll go finish that egg and cress instead.” I can feel him trembling underneath my hands, lightly, all over, like he’s shivering from cold but his skin isn’t any cooler to the touch than usual. 

“I always did say --” Baz’s hands jerk and clench at my hips as I work open his belt buckle (it’s weird undoing someone else’s belt, it’s all backwards) and unbutton the top button of his trousers. I can’t get any lower without moving my own arse, so I reverse direction, working the buttons of his dress shirt open one at a time as I move up his chest.

When I reach the top button he lets me slide a hand behind his neck and pull him up into a kiss, lifting him up off the bed so we can work the shirt free of his arms, push his vest up over his head and cast it aside.

This is familiar terrain: the downy hair on his chest, sparser than mine, the dusky color and oval shape of his nipples soft to the touch (but I know, by now, how they respond to my fingers and tongue and teeth), the curve of his ribs too close under his skin, the tension of muscles in his abdomen, the shuddering breath he takes beneath my hands, eyes on my face as I push him gently back down onto the bed.

It’s a heady feeling, to have Baz pinned beneath me like this, to feel like I’ve finally _won_ the battle in a way neither of us expected.

“Tell me again,” I say, lifting and settling myself more firmly across his hips. I love the feeling of him between my thighs, love the soft-hard press of him trapped against my groin. I let my weight sink down against him, watch the shards of darkness reappear in his pupils before he eyelids flutter closed and he lets himself push his hips upward to meet me.

I want him to remember. I want to hear him say it again.

“ ** _I choose you_** ,” he whispers, with words that carry the weight of magic with them, though it’s no spell I’ve ever heard of. “I’ve -- _Goddess._  I think I’ve _always_ been choosing you, Simon,” he says, fumbling with my belt buckle and fly, “even before I knew -- even before I could ever imagine having --”

I probably shouldn’t be thinking about Agatha right now. And I’m not, not really. What I’m thinking about is how I imagined for so long that the first time I did this it would be in her bedroom at the Wellbeloves’ house, some night when her parents were out at a charity event or West End show. Back when I was with Agatha, I’d spent a lot of time worrying about getting it right. The older boys at the group homes I stayed at during the summers talked, sometimes, about how bloody hard it was to tell if a girl was enjoying herself. And I’d already felt like I was getting it wrong, somehow, with Agatha, so I’d assumed I would probably get it wrong with her having sex as well. Sometimes, in my head, I’d practice apologizing to her so that I’d have something all prepared for when I inevitably got it wrong.

What I’m thinking, now, is how Agatha never reached for me like Baz is reaching for me now, like regardless of how shit I am at this it’s _me_ he wants, it’s _me_ he can’t believe he gets to have.

What I’m thinking, now, is what a rush it is to be _wanted._

There’s a confusing wrestle of limbs, next, and we’re laughing and kissing, and kissing and laughing some more at the awkwardness of getting our trousers and socks off, and then pants, too, because there’s no real graceful way to do any of that, especially not with a four foot long tail and two enthusiastic boners.  

I used to worry about that, as well, about Agatha laughing at me for looking ridiculous naked -- because I _do_ look ridiculous naked. But when Baz and I are finally naked together I forget to worry because there’s too many other wonderful things going on. I’m busy pressing myself along the length of Baz’s shivering flank, wondering if it’s possible to get any closer. I’m occupied sliding my fingers down across his belly and through the thatch of curls between his thighs, distracted thinking about how holding him here is both similar and utterly different from holding myself.

I don’t have any time, tonight, to feel self-conscious about how ridiculous I look naked because Baz arches up into my touch with a groan, pressing his face into my neck in the way he’s been so careful to avoid since _that night_ … and I am brilliant _bloody brilliant_ for finally pushing Basilton fucking Grimm-Pitch through his _bloody_ self-control.

For figuring out a way for him to have what he wants.

“ _Fuck_ , Simon --” Baz says, “-- not, it’s too -- you’ll --” and he’s pushing my hand away from him, pushing me onto my back, pinning my wrists up against the pillows. The bed is really too narrow for us both, but the last thing I feel like doing right now is suggesting we stop and push the beds together. It’s bigger than Fiona’s sofa, anyway, and softer than the floor so all and all I’m in no position to complain.

I’m not complaining about my position at all, in fact. I suddenly understand what it is about me leaning over Baz that makes him go boneless, because _fuck_ does it feel good, his weight on my wrists and his knees and calves bracketing my hips. I feel safe and just a little not-safe, his eyes shadowed beneath his mussed hair, his lips red with kisses and full from blood.

“Not so fast, Snow,” he says against my ear, and I shiver against him, my skin hot and clammy all at once. It’s my turn to shudder because it feels like my skin can’t contain all of the things that I want, that I know, that I need, all at once, prickling almost like magic just underneath the surface of skin.

I’m thrusting up against him, I realize hazily, and he’s letting me, flexing his thighs and lifting himself up just high enough that I can work myself against him -- like we’ve done before, only this time we don’t have four layers of cloth between us and it feels shockingly immediate and messy.

 _More, I want more, I want_ \--

“Tell me again?” It’s Baz this time, breathless above me, his eyes laughing and dark, and I realize I’ve been babbling, twisting under his hands, thrusting up against him, sweat and slick smearing his belly, Baz damp against my own belly every time I press with increasing urgency upwards.

"I want you," I tell him. "I want you. So much, I want --"

He lifts himself up, away from me, and I grab with my tail before I even realize what I’m doing, wrapping around his forearm and tugging, trying to pull him back down. He laughs aloud this time, open and happy, letting me pull his hand back toward my face. He caresses my chin and lips with his outstretched fingers, then pulls back and nudges my knees open, crawling backwards down the bed until he can kneel between my legs, his hands firm on my hips.

It feels so good it’s almost painful, the way he pushes his hand slowly and deliberately up the underside of my dick, fingers and palm stroking upward with a teasing pressure, fingers closing around me, thumbing moisture across the head, tugging back down. His face is a study of concentration as he watches and listens (and Crowley knows probably _smells_ ) for the effect he’s having on me. He stretches out between my thighs and I can feel his own erection dragging against my leg, hear his sharp intake of breath at the ephemeral friction.

I try to roll my knee inward to give him something to rut against, but I’m distracted by his hands and the warmth of his mouth as he presses scattered kisses against my thigh, across the curve of my him.

 _Bloody hell_ , I think, _he’s going to suck me off._

I’d be lying, madly, completely, if I said I’d never imagined Baz with his lips sealed around me while wanking in the shower, or in the dark of my bed with his soft, rhythmic breathing on the other end of the mobile connection. Is it weird to get off listening to your boyfriend sleeping? I’d decided at the time that since Baz had, by his own admission, been lying in the dark in this very bed getting hard while listening to me sleep _for years_ I’d probably earned a few in return.

But he doesn’t put his mouth on my dick. He presses his nose into the tangle of hair at the groove of my thigh and inhales. I fancy I can hear his heart racing thought it’s probably just my own pulse in my ears. And all the while, Baz hasn’t stopped the slow, steady work of his hand and dimly I realize I’m lifting my hips to meet him: rise … and fall. rise … and fall.

My tail is still wrapped around his forearm and I can’t stop it from pulling tighter and tighter as the orgasm starts to build deep in my belly, my fingers and toes curling into the tangled bedclothes underneath us. I turn my head into the pillows and smell him there, warm and familiar, everywhere around me, pushing me, pulling me, letting me let go.

And then, before I’m ready and after he’s made it last longer than I thought possible, I’m coming in Baz’s hand, arching up into the weight of him where he’s holding me, my eyes screwed shut against the _too much_ and _just right_ of everything that’s happening, my wings jerking awkwardly beneath me like I’m trying to fly away and also like I’m trying to drive myself even closer all in a single, confused failing motion.

It takes me a few high, shallow, and then gasping, deep breaths to come back down, the pounding of my heart still loud in my ears, the restless urgency of want slowly seeping out of my limbs, pushed out by the slow molasses of post-orgasm warmth and lassitude.

It takes a few moments for the rush of it all to fade and for me to notice a strange, completely unfamiliar _tugging_ sensation. A tugging sensation that’s starting to ache in a not entirely pleasant way.

“Baz?” I cough, experimentally, but it comes out more like an embarrassingly breathy sigh. The tugging doesn’t stop and the ache is … not fading away.  

Groggily, I blink open my eyes and roll my head just enough to peer down my messy front at the sight of Baz still curled between my legs, lips sealed high against my inner thigh.

_Fuck_ .

“Um, Baz?” I try again, coughing to clear my throat. I consider the coordination of my limbs and lift myself forward on my elbows just enough to reach out and brush my hand across the back of his head, tugging lightly at his hair.

_Fuck fuck fuck fuck_ \--

“Baz!” I try a third time, a little sharper, and that must get through because he jerks under my palm and I hear the soft _pop!_ of his lips as he pulls away, catch a brief glimpse of welling blood where his mouth had been before he’s scrambling back off the end of the bed and I’m struggling to follow --

“No,” he’s mouthing, almost silently, a slight lisp around his fangs, “no, no, no, _no no nonono--_ ” and shaking his head, shaking himself rid of my tail, pushing me away as I reach out for him, “ _Crowley_ , Simon, just-- stay away, I need to, you need to, _fuck_ \--”

And before I can catch hold of any part of him, keep him from leaving, he’s scrambled across the room and the door of the washroom is shut with a _bang!_ and the bolt we’ve hardly ever used is slammed into place with a panicked rattle-clang.

“Baz!” I call after him, “Baz -- it’s okay, it’s okay, just --”

“Shut up, Simon!” He shouts back, and I can hear the edge of panic in his voice. “Just -- _shut. up._ ”

The orgasm and blood loss catch up with me, suddenly, and the room starts to spin. So I drop back onto the end of the bed and stare up at the ceiling, waiting for my stomach to settle.

It doesn’t help that I can hear the sound of Baz puking in the toilet, on the other side of the bolted door.

I’m sticky and starting to get cold. When the room stops lurching quite so precipitously around me, I risk sitting up slowly and peering down at the wound on my thigh. I have blood smeared kind of everywhere, and I’ve bled some on the sheets (I wonder if Baz’s parents will get a bill for damages from the cleaning staff), but the actual puncture wounds seem to be healing over already, and are only a little bit tender. I press experimentally against the spot and it doesn’t feel any more painful than when Baz sucked a hickey onto my collarbone.

Like last time, I can feel the shot-of-whiskey burn spreading from the site of the bite, tangling pleasantly this time with the loose-limbed feeling of having just had a really good orgasm.

Whatever toxin Baz has in his fangs doesn’t seem to be any more intense with an actual successful bite than it was with a scratch.

I still don’t need 999, or whoever is on call in the Watford infirmary.

Although I should probably eat something. I’m still feeling a bit dizzy. I reach down and pick up one of the shortbreads Cook Pritchard tucked in with the sandwiches. I swallow it down in a couple of bites and then consider the washroom door, and the silence that’s now emanating from it.

I sigh.

This is really _not_ how I had imagined this evening would end.

I go over to the washroom door and rest my forehead against the cool, varnished wood of its familiar exterior.

“Baz?” I try. Silence. “Love, can I come in?” More silence.

Then a rustle, and I hear the bolt sliding back. Then another rustle. More silence.

I take a deep breath, grab the door handle, and push my way in.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content note: descriptions of nausea/vomiting in the opening paragraphs. If you skip to paragraph six ("I’m terrified by the fact...") you should be safe.

**BAZ**

Our washroom has always been somewhat cramped and dark and airless, and tonight it’s giving me the disorienting, throat-constricting sensation that I’m back in the numpties’ coffin.

Sitting on the tiled floor with my back against the wall by the toilet, I’m dimly away that it would help to crack open the window above the tub, to lean out into the inrush of air and remind my senses that I’m at Watford. That it’s a cloudless June night and Mummers Tower is still home for a few hours more. But my limbs are leaden and movement feels impossible. I’m sweating a cold, sick sweat as well as shaking from the vicious stomach cramps that have arrived on the heels of sex and my first taste of human blood -- _Simon’s blood_ \-- and heaving it all back up into the toilet bowl diluted by stomach acid and Pinot Grigio.

I haven’t even managed to haul myself up to the sink to rinse out my mouth, and the enclosed, stifling space smells sour with sick and my own fear.

I’m aware, distantly, that I’m hyperventilating slightly, panting and lightheaded. I think maybe my teeth are chattering?

I can’t -- I can’t -- I can’t -- my stomach turns over and I pull myself over the the toilet to breathe through my mouth for a few moments, spitting blood-heavy saliva into the bowl.

I can’t (I don’t want to) get rid of the taste of Simon in my mouth. He’s still in my throat, under the raw burn of vomit. He’s deep in my gut, nauseatingly rich, and underneath the sweat and the shaking and the cramping and the self-recrimination I’m terrified by how _exquisite_ he tastes and how much I want to taste him again.

I’m terrified by the fact that even on four pints of blood for the day I’d gone from pressing kisses across the cradle of his hips, to feeling his orgasm shaking against my lips through his overheated skin, to fang-deep in his femoral artery before I knew what the bloody hell I was doing.

Crowley’s sake, this time it had actually taken _Simon_ pulling himself out of his post-coital daze to stop me from -- from --

I’ve never drunk human blood, before tonight. I’m not a murderer. And, until a few months ago, I had always thought of drinking blood in terms of slaughter. It’s not like my father ever _talked_ with me about being a vampire, like I had _options_ . Everyone knows that vampires are monsters, that they kill people. It had taken Simon and Penny badgering me about how much I _don’t_ actually know -- about how little anyone we know seems to know -- to start wondering if what “everyone knows” isn’t actually true.

Have you ever tried doing an Internet search for things like “vampire physiology” or “vampires and human blood” or “vampires and humans sex”? Using the Normal search engines (where “vampires and humans in love” is actually an autocomplete option) just brings up a bunch of results for humans role-playing as vampires during sex and more fiction and fanfiction than one vampire-obsessed person could possibly read in a single human lifetime. Using magickal search engines makes me feel even worse because it’s just nine-tenths anti-vampire bigotry. The sort of bigotry that even _I_ used to casually engage in, until recently, and then there’s this subset of password-protected websites and closed social media groups and Unikorn (the magickal Reddit) threads that I think are either groups of vampires or pro-vampire mages that -- as far as I can tell -- peddle these wild theories about vampires as a super race. I’ve only ever lurked, occasionally, on those sites and always scrub my browser history after because they leave me feeling dirty and nauseated.

I can’t see myself anywhere.

I can’t see a place for me and Simon.

And the Anathema wasn’t working after all. _Crowley_ . I drop my head back against the wall, and then when the jolt to my spine sends pain shooting into my skull I do it again. _Fucking fuck_. I never should have let Simon talk me into doing this again before we --

“Baz?” Simon’s voice on the other side of the door is pitched low, but he knows I can hear him. I realize, once his voice breaks through the rushing sound of panic in my own head, that he’s been moving about in our room. I can hear his breathing now, deep and even, less than six feet from where I’m sitting. His heartbeat is a bit sluggish, but I can’t hear any signs of distress.

I realize part of me was expecting him to walk away from the mess that I’ve made of this night. But instead, here he is, on the other side of the door, come to find me.

He sounds tired.

Goddess knows _I’m_ tired.

“Love, can I come in?” He sounds tentative as well as tired, like he’s he’s unsure of his welcome. _Love_ . I try to remember if he’s ever called me _love_ before.

I pull my knees up, reflexively, in a gesture of self-protection even though I know -- I have ample evidence by now -- that it’s Simon who needs protection from me and not the other way around. I consider not answering, just sleeping (or not sleeping) here on the floor so that Simon can rest safely through the night. But he’s stubborn and I know he’s probably going to break down the door in a minute if I don’t let him in -- probably breaking several toes in the process. So I spell open the door with a flicker of flame across the tips of my weary fingers and close my eyes against the light of the bedroom as he pushes his way in.

 _Goddess_. Simon brings with him a wash of scents, all of them fast becoming (if they weren’t already) my favorite indulgences. I shiver at the sense-memory of his body hovering over mine, his naked skin pressed up underneath me, the taste of his come that mixed with the taste of his blood in my mouth, rosewater and ocean spray and the bitter aftertaste of spunk, all tangled together on my tongue with the musk of _want_ that he carries with him whenever I’m nearby (and probably even when I’m not).

I want to cry, to be honest, because it’s just so _unfair_ that I’m never going to deserve him.

What did either of us ever do to deserve the impossible?

Simon closes the door behind himself and I feel his heat signature crossing the few paces between us. He doesn’t say anything, but folds himself down in front of my knees and reaches across to press a hand to my cheek and wipe away the exhausted tears that absolutely aren’t seeping out from under my eyelids.

I feel like absolute shite.

I lean into his palm, like I always do, because I can’t ever stop leaning into him.

“I’m okay,” he says, bringing up his other hand and fumbling slightly in the dark because his night vision is crap, even for a human. His palms on my damp cheeks are warm and I blink open my eyes so I can consider the expression on his face.

I realize he can’t see me so I extract my left hand from between us and **strike a match** in the palm, resting my wrist against the cool porcelain of the edge of the toilet bowl. Simon reaches up over my shoulder and flushes, clearing some of the stench from the air around us. 

The wavering light settles into an even glow as my hand steadies and I can see the worry in his face, but his color is good and his pulse is still steady. He doesn’t smell like he’s in distress, although there’s something unfamiliar tingeing musk of his usual signature. Something that smells a bit like sex and a bit like … something that should be familiar but I’m too tired to trace it.

“I’m okay,” Simon says again, thumbs pressing gently across my cheekbones, fingers curved against my skull behind my ears where he’s especially fond of pressing kisses. “How are you? What can I do?”

I cough, phlegmy, trying to clear my throat; my face is probably smeared with spittle and blood.

“It didn’t work,” I say, and even to my own ears my voice sounds lost, “I thought I wouldn’t be able to --”

“But, Baz,” Simon says, carefully, as if he’s speaking to a child who might throw a temper tantrum (I realize, with a flicker of amusement, that he’s copying the tone I use when I think he’s being particularly dense), “that’s what I mean -- _I’m okay_ . I was surprised. It was --” he licks his lips and his eyes dart away from my face, then back, and for a moment I want to chase that expression and find out what it means, but -- “--it hurt, a little. I didn’t know -- but you weren’t _harming_ me. I think that’s why the Anathema didn’t kick in. Because drinking my blood _isn’t_ doing me harm. Not the way --” again, that evasive skitter of his eyes, and I can feel his pulse speed up slightly.

 _Oh_ . I think, distantly. _Oh, that’s interesting._

“I liked it.” He says, abruptly.

“Simon --” I can feel the roll of panic in my belly. _We can’t be talking about this._

“You never asked. After the first time. And I -- I never told you.” He hauls in a breath. “It’s -- intense. But not in a -- not in a bad way. Like what a hickey feels like? And -- and after I can feel, like, whatever is in your saliva --”

“That would be the venom, Simon.” I close my fist over the flame in my palm and push Simon away, standing up abruptly and stumbling over to the window where I push ineffectually at the latch for a few seconds before getting it open and pushing the pane outward from the bottom sill to let in a rush of night air. “Sodding _fuck,_ Simon. I’m _poisonous_. It doesn’t make it better that I’m somehow drugging you into liking it."

“That’s not what I’m saying!”

“Well, it bloody well _sounds_ like what you’re saying.”

I can hear him moving behind me and the electric light clicks on over the sink.

“What I’m saying --” he says, coming up behind me and sliding his arms around my waist.   _Crowley,_ I just want to let him convince me it’s all going to be fine. But I keep seeing Nicodemus against the back of my eyelids and those horrible Unikorn threads with their talk of a master race of vampire-mages and feeding farms full of Normals in some _Matrix_ -meets-Holocaust dystopian future.

“What I’m _saying_ ,” Simon repeats against my neck, “is that my _boyfriend_ \--” he slides a palm down across my belly, rubbing in gentle, soothing circles like he does when he knows I’m upset and he’s trying to calm me, “-- just jerked me off for the first time tonight. And it was brilliant. _He’s_ brilliant.”

He manhandles me around so my back is to the window, the cold draft pouring in over my shoulders, and presses me up against the wall next to the now-empty rack where he used to hang his Watford-issued towels.

“ _You’re_ brilliant,” he says, tipping his chin up slightly to make sure he’s looking me (stubbornly) in the eye.

I force myself not to look away. 

“You don’t understand how it --” I start to say. Then stop. “How it feels.” Swallow. “I can’t stop thinking about how good. You taste. It’s --” This is so hard to say out loud. I feel more naked, suddenly, telling him this than I did when we were tangled together on the bed.

I mean, we’re both still naked, a hairsbreadth apart. But this feels … raw. Like someone is scraping away the top layers of my skin. “I want you, Simon, and sometimes I can’t tell whether it’s for sex or for -- or for food.”

He looks up at me for a handful of agonizing moments without speaking. Licks his lips. Slides his hands down from my shoulders to my hips, pulling us together so that I can feel the cool tackyness of his skin in desperate need of a wash. I think, suddenly, that I should run him a bath and sponge him off, all over, as an apology for making such a mess of the night.

I feel his tail wrap around the backs of my thighs, warm and sinuous and tickling slightly against the sensitive skin on the backs of my knees. His wings shudder against his shoulders.

He shakes his head, as if to clear it, then says, “That actually -- that actually doesn’t bother me, Baz.” He swallows and I let myself watch the movement of his throat, see the bloom of a hickey against his collarbone. _Like what a hickey feels like_.

“Well it should,” I say, but I can feel the fight going out of me. I’ve … I’ve reached my limit, whatever that was. I’ve lost track of what I’m resisting and why I’m resisting it.

“I’ve had enough of doing what people told me I ‘should’,” Simon says, “since you know bloody well that nearly got all of us killed.”

I reach up to push his hair away from his face. “I was brilliant?”

He grins at me. “You heard me,” he says, but his tone is soft, in a way that makes me want to hide my face in his wings.

He reaches up to slide a hand around the back of my neck like he enjoys doing, my cue to lean in for a kiss.

“I owe you an orgasm,” he mumbles against my mouth. I keep my mouth firmly closed because I still taste pretty horrible, but rub noses with him, feeling the soft slide and press of his slightly open lips against my own.

I laugh, resting my forehead against his. “Goddess, Simon, I don’t have enough blood … or anything, really, in me to come tonight. I doubt I could get it up.” 

“ _Mmm._ ” Simon presses his face into my neck, clearly unconvinced, but doesn’t press. “In that case, let’s take a shower. Because I don’t know about you but I feel gross and cold. Ugh.”

I’ve never taken a shower with someone before, unless you count when I was an infant and my parents or nanny had to bathe me, or the gym showers where everyone washes up after a football match while pretending not to be checking out how they compare to their team mates.

Taking a shower with Simon is both more and less awkward than taking a shower with my football mates. I brush my teeth to get the bile and blood out of my mouth while Simon gets our reluctant water pipes to settle at the right temperature. And then there’s this awkward dance of “you first,” “no, why don’t you--” since we have to take turns under the spray and the shower curtain keeps getting tangled in Simon’s wings. In the end we have plenty of hot water, though, since most of the student rooms are empty for the summer. And because it’s after midnight. So we go slow and let the steam fill the room until Simon’s skin is pinked and pruning.

I don’t sponge Simon off all over, but he does let me wash his hair _and_ put in conditioner which he is usually too impatient to use.

And he lets me towel him dry, including his wings, and lets me check the site of my bite for -- I don’t exactly know what. An infection? Scarring? There’s a penumbra of bruising and two neat puncture wounds about an inch and a half apart -- familiar to me from the corpses I’ve created over the past seven years, and I have to breathe deep to keep myself from spiraling into panic all over again.

“You -- you really liked this?” I heard myself asking, fingers lightly tracing the circumference of the bruise (slightly warm to the touch, but no smell of infection or necrosis). I’m crouched down to dry off his legs and he cards a hand through my damp hair.

“Yeah, Baz,” he says, softly, “I did. Next time we just plan for it a little more carefully, yeah? I don’t fancy hauling you out of the toilet again.” He shakes his head, “Anyway, I object to the waste of my blood. I worked hard to make that.”

I look up at him and feel a slight sense of vertigo because he suddenly looks grown up. I know it sounds daft, because we’re both of us still just kids, really, pretending at being grown-ups, but sometimes I feel _ancient_ and tonight -- tonight I can see the shadows of the Simon I will have in my life five, ten, twenty, fifty years from tonight.

I think maybe I _don’t_ have to worry about hurting him. Not the way I have been.

I think maybe -- maybe the Crucible _did_ know what it was doing when it tied us together.

I think -- I think that Simon is _my_ Chosen One even if he isn’t anyone else’s. And maybe it _means_ something that he’s choosing me back.

Intention, after all, is a key part of what makes a spell powerful. And Simon might be Normal now -- as Normal as a person can be when he’s Simon Snow -- but I wonder if there’s a different kind of Normal magic at work here.

Back in the main room, we pick up the food and collect our discarded clothing from the floor and shove Simon’s bed up against mine so we can spread the duvet across both and pretend we haven’t just done embarrassingly adult things in the room we used to sleep in as kids who thought we hated each other.

And then Simon catches me from behind and pulls me back onto the bed, rolling us over so he can crawl up over me on hands and knees, still warm and honey-scented from the shower. I can feel the exhaustion overtaking his limbs, and my own; even as my body responds to his nearness, his still-nakedness, I know we’re not doing anything … more tonight.

Simon rolls to one side and tucks himself against me, pulling the duvet up over us both and sliding a warm hand back down over my belly, fingers brushing through the tangle of curls at my groin. I lift my hips, just enough to let him know his touch is wanted, and he _hmms_ into the crook of my neck.

I turn my face into his damp hair, brushing a kiss across his forehead, and think about how many nights I lay awake wishing that this were my life -- that Simon Snow would come willingly into my arms and sink into sleep beside me. How many nights this past term we’ve made do with the tenuous connection of breathe and heartbeat collapsed into nearness through our mobile phones. How, miraculously -- almost magically -- this was only one of many, _many_  nights to come when I would be able to sleep with Simon’s _aliveness_ wrapped around me in trust and assurance.

“Do you _ever_ stop thinking?” Simon murmurs into my neck.  

“Not as long as I have to think enough for both of us,” I grumble, and he nuzzles me in the shoulder blade. He laughs, sleepily, and presses a kiss against my shoulder. 

"It's true!"  I say, "You're so daft. I don't know why I ever put up with you."

"Chose you." Simon says. "'N you chose me. Stuck with me now." He wriggles closer, extending a wing out over the fold of the duvet like an extra layer of warmth. I can feel the heat it's giving off, warm like the rest of him. His tail insinuates itself between my thighs, wrapping around my leg like a creeper vine.

I’ve promised myself and I’ve promised Simon (and Penelope, when Simon told her and made me repeat it), that I’ll at least try to believe I deserve him. Maybe if I pretend to be that sort of person long enough I’ll convince myself, as well as them, that it’s true.

I listen to Snow breathing beside me in the dark and watch the shadows creep across the room. I think about how many nights Snow and I spent in this place,  facing one another from across the room, opponents even in sleep. I can hear Simon’s heart beating steadily in his chest, feel the flutter of its  _ Thumpa...Thumpa...Thumpa  _ against my ribs, echoing against my lungs and heart. 

I shift my hips to the left, snug against Simon, where he’s tucked himself alongside me. I can still feel the soft shape and heat of his cock nestled between his legs. When I shift, I can smell his arousal beneath the scent of my soap, which he used in the shower.

I can feel my muscles beginning to relax. Simon murmurs softly in his near-sleep, fingers twitching possessively where they curl around me, soft and without any demand. This wasn’t exactly how I had hoped to spend last night at Watford. But I think as I drift off to sleep -- the first time I’ve been able to fall asleep in Simon’s arms since the night the Mage died -- I can’t actually think of a better way to close this chapter of our lives together.

Because on the edge of sleep, in this familiar room, with the unfamiliar weight of Simon at my back and the pressure of his tail wrapped like a safety belt strong and sure across my chest, I can almost taste something other than death and despair on the back of my tongue. 

I can almost taste something like a future not filled with loneliness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all have been lovely! 
> 
> This is the final chapter of the main fic; as promised a "morning after" fic will be forthcoming in the next month or so. Featuring the first orgasm-while-having-partnered-sex of our darling Basilton Grimm-Pitch.
> 
> UPDATE: [Mine Is the Sunlight](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6320188) (the morning-after fic) is now live!

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Stephen Sondheim's [You Are Not Alone](http://artists.letssingit.com/stephen-sondheim-lyrics-no-one-is-alone-p9bt1nf#axzz3yjHWV1Je):  
>    
>  _Sometimes people leave you_  
>  _halfway through the wood._  
>  _Others may deceive you._  
>  _You decide what's good._  
>  _You decide alone._  
>  _But no one is alone._  
>     
> The book Daphne very kindly purchases for Baz is the brilliantly inclusive [_S.E.X._](http://www.amazon.co.uk/S-E-X-All-you-need---know-Progressive-Sexuality/dp/1600940102) by Heather Corinna of [Scarleteen](http://www.scarleteen.com/). It's an excellent sexuality resource but does, unfortunately, contain no sexual well-being resources for young vampires.


End file.
